My City Bikes app gives riders the inside scoop of Monterey rides

MONTEREY &GT;&GT; Mobile applications can expedite airplane travel, simplify buying a pizza and help streamline paying the bills. Why not an app that touts the health benefits of cycling and details bicycling routes in cities around the country.

That's the idea behind My City Bikes. It's is a national campaign of free localized mobile cycling apps. The easy-to-access information addresses the statistics of obesity and heart disease and correspondingly emphasizes community wellness and detailed bicycling routes.

The Monterey Bikes app shares the same platform as the other 14 cities involved in seven states — Tampa, Fla., to Durango, Colo. The application is expansive and cyclists can find road, mountain, recreational and commuter biking locales throughout the Monterey area.

The Bike My City concept, which began in the Silicon Valley in 2012, is based on a three-point nationwide concern.

Consider: One in three adults and one in five children in the United States are obese. An average passenger car produces about one pound of pollutants per mile. One in four women and men in North America die of heart disease.

To help counter the dismal statistics, an app that encourages cycling and provides instant information on its best practices and best places to pedal, can only help.

The free My City Bikes app touts three basic ideas. Biking is a safe, family-friendly activity that benefits children and adults of all fitness levels. Commuter biking helps improve personal and environmental health. Cycling can be done indoors or out at any pace to improve cardiovascular health.

"It's geared toward getting more people out on bicycles," said Sherry Chandler of Doug Chandler Performance in Salinas, one of two area business partners in the new project. "We have so much good riding around here, bicycle paths, trails. It's all just in our backyard.

Each localized My City Bikes app costs $7,000 to $12,000 to build. Local co-sponsors contribute $400 to $2,500 toward its development, with the remaining costs being covered by the My City Bikes program, individual sponsors and volunteer programmers.

My City Bike apps are pending in Las Vegas, Honolulu and Kansas City as well as additional California locations in the Napa Valley and Silicon Valley.

"We just wanted to be a part of that, hoping that people get out there," said Chandler. "Maybe they were afraid and didn't know where to go. They can go to this is app and get some information. We just wanted to get in on it."

Bear Bikes, also in Salinas, is another business partner of the upstart My City Bikes program in Monterey. It's involved to improve the "bike friendliness" of the community.

The My City Bikes app for the Monterey area is intuitive. It's divided into several sections: Road and Commuter, Mountain and Trail, Recreation and Touring and Heat Monitor (temperature).

The lower half entry page includes the section Find Local Routes & Rides. Each route provides a distance, its difficulty and route map. The sections are spaced ideally and the font script is also larger than expected. The result is an easy-to-navigate app that can only help cycling.